EE touts next-gen broadband Smart Hub with Wi-Fi 7 for 2024 UK network operator EE has hooked up with telecoms silicon supplier Qualcomm on a next-gen home Smart Hub that will bring Wi-Fi 7 support to its broadband customers. EE, now a part of BT Group’s consumer division, said it plans to roll out new in-home hardware next year that will feature Wi-Fi 7 support from Qualcomm as part …
Providing QoS isn't a problem for service providers, standards have existed since the last century. The problem is twofold, (A) they want paying for it and (B) most users are still on Asymmetric links.
(A) Anything arriving at a SP edge is treated as best effort unless it's from a client paying for a better service and Joe Public isn't aware that while they can have multiple smooth 4k streams inbound this is due to DisnAmazFlixTube stumping up the cash to get the required QoS & bandwidth from their nearest hub into the service providers.
(B) It doesn't matter if they have multi-gig from device to home router, the majority of people still have sub 20mb/s Broadband uplink rates drip feeding into the interweb.
Any ISP with a significant amount of ingress from the likes of DisnAmazFlixTube should have NNIs with lots of bandwidth rather than public IX peering and internally its a good idea to have QoS all the way.
Regarding the second point, according to speedtest.net the median for the UK is 77.61Mbps. I think I've read you need somewhere in the region of 50Mbps for 8k. Of course the biggest problem there is when everyone starts doing it at peak times...
ISPs will have QoS internally it's the only sane policy, but extending it outside has a cost.
50Mbps for 8k will be the full rate, add in some compression and transmitting only the changed pixels will bring that down by quite a lot.
77Mbps may well be the UK download rate, Upload rates are way way lower. Any point to point link will only be as fast as the slowest link in either direction, for 99% that'll be the first mile.
You're spot on with peak times, contention rates can be up to 100:1 with the cheaper ISPs.
The Speedtest.net results need to be taken with a large pinch of salt - they only represent a particular subset of Speedtest results and thus are not representative of the wider population's experience.
I'm also wary of reading too much into the results as insufficient information is provided to give any real background context to the headline figure.
Wherever I set my router I would have at lease two brick walls between my devices.
(If they are in the same room they are wired anyway)
I would like a mesh network to handle wired backhaul to give me decent WiFi.
But where.
Either use out device as a master router (Replace the ISP box).
Or
Get our network appliance to manage it.
I’d agree with the cat5/6 idea. I run over mains networking at home, and want to use proper wesh wifi with my TP-Link Deco kit, but the mains networking boxes block the management frames between wifi APs. I have recently installed 3x OpenWRT routers in a site-wide network using 802.11r for a community centre and that works really well for recent laptops and phones (but apparently not Intel-silicon Macs or many Android phones).
I live in the middle of a populous British city and use EE. We have no indoors coverage and out in the street its 1 or 2 bars if you're lucky. We only get calls over wifi. Much of the city has poor to middling signal and certainly no 5g that I've experienced.
I understand the other suppliers are much the same.
Until suppliers can get basics right we'll continue to lag behind many other countries.
I think you're missing the point, i.e. you assume that the purpose of EE is to improve your service. I think the purpose of EE is to increase revenue as much possible with as little effort and cost as possible, and this 'next-gen broadband Smart Hub with Wi-Fi 7 for 2024' is where, they reckon, they can increase their profit And simultaneously, they'll keep farting in your (and mine) general direction re. improvement of core (YOU think!) reception.
btw, this applies to any business in any sector, no?
I used to be a QoS advocate, but the impact of Moore's Law on data networking means that you can in almost all cases run even highly demanding services across a non-QoS infrastructure.
Millions of Teams and Zoom users can't be wrong.
(yes, the choke point is still typically the Internet connection)
EE claim they have 85% coverage of the UK.
Well, having 26 bars of signal on your mobile may be great but you can’t actually transfer any data!
And where’s that useless shower of sh*t OFCOM?
“According to Ofcom’s Connected Nations Report Summer 2020. 85% geographic coverage equates to more than 99% of the population.”
What a surprise! The failed government uses one of its non regulating regulators to pump out more propaganda to the plebs.
EE/BT making billions for a service that only partially works.
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